Wednesday 19 November 2014

What These American Jury System Problems Are

By Ida Dorsey


Certain people help the judges when they decide the verdicts to the criminals. These groups usually consist of twelve members. This set up is common in America.

Sadly, the set up has become unfair and corrupted nowadays. Some American jury system problems posed by this mechanism are faced by the citizens. Other activists have called for its reformation as well as its abolition due to these issues. The following common issues are faced by citizens.

A hearing usually takes a long time to begin since the court will still be looking for individuals who could possibly be members of a jury. They will be screening numerous potential jurors for this. They will be filtering out those having no criminal records with them, not on parole, and other conditions. If the crime happened in a big city, the selection procedure for jurors will definitely be taking a long time.

The qualifications of the members of these juries pose another problem. These individuals typically have different professions. Some could have day jobs like teachers, plumbers, and small business owners. They typically did not complete college degrees in Law. As such, they will usually base their judgments on their own opinions and views.

The legal terms involved in different cases might not be known to them, as well. These legal terms will have to be explained to the persons before the trials will be continued. The explanations will also lengthen the time that should be spent for the hearings. There are times, as well, where these terms might not be fully understood by the individuals after the explanations have been given.

Ideally, a trial that needs the involvement of a jury should only take a single day. However, because of situations like misunderstandings, a trial could be taking a month. Since a hearing is requiring the presence of each individual, they might be productive during this time and even incurring losses if they are running and operating their respective businesses.

There are certain stages for people to file certain cases. Lower courts should hear some charges while the court of appeals will handle the others. However, there are certain cases that reach the need for juries even if they are not necessary. These charges may be totally comical or ridiculous and even children will be able to make sound judgments about them. These are additional burdens to these courts.

The frequency to be summoned for a jury could vary. The frequency is dependent on the number of proceedings that will be heard by the courts in certain time periods. For instance, many cases could be filed to the courts of big cities. For this matter, lots of jurors will also be summoned. There could only be a few number of qualified jurors. With such, they could be summoned for several times by the courts.

The problems presented are only a few for the mechanism. Numerous organizations are supporting the cause of reforming the jury system. Numerous individuals even want to be totally abolishing this mechanism. The supreme court must be checking and studying the requests to see to it that they will be giving the defendants and the accusers the justice which is due them.




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